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Crowd-Funding a Mission To Jupiter's Moons
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Like so many great leaps for mankind, getting a human to one of Jupiter's moons must begin with a small step. And Objective Europa is aiming to do exactly that. A small team — architects, futurist designers, private space pioneers and even Jacques Cousteau's son — is beginning the planning stage to send human beings on a one-way trip to the Jovian moon Europa. The effort is headed up by Kristian Von Bengston, the founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, an open source DIY space program based in his native Denmark. And he's quite serious about transporting a man or woman beyond our atmosphere, Mars and the asteroid belt."
I, for one, would be fine with laying my life on the line to explore Europa. Its has been my dream since I was like 8. It always seemed to be the coolest of the planets/moons in the solar system. Except for the whole, cannot escape the water thing. However, do they want monkeys, or skilled individuals? This would make a big difference. Guess I will have to RTFA....good one, I know.
They can't even figure out how to survive a single day on Europa without dying (due to the radiation), and they want us to just give them money. Also, how much will it cost to give these astronauts enough food, water, and materials to survive on, not only for the 600 day ONE WAY trip, for the rest of the time they are going to spend there?
This is going to cost a ridiculous amount of money, and the project itself is ridiculous because the project hasn't even been fully thought out beyond what's going to happen beyond Day 1 of landing on Europa. Hell, there might not even be a Day 2.
Only a fucking fool would invest in this.
The radiation level at the surface of Europa is equivalent to a dose of about 5400mSv (540 rem) per day, an amount of radiation that would cause severe illness or death in human beings exposed for a single day.